Remodelling of La Riera

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This intervention is in Sant Feliu de Llobregat, one of the busiest working-class neighbourhoods close to Barcelona. And it came to life as a creative response to the demolition of one of the last remaining factories in the area to build an underground parking facility, which created a large void and gave rise to the building around the old industrial fabric.

This project creatively solves the problem by giving a twist to the walls of the backyards of the houses, previously hidden but now converted into the façade of the new urban space.

Ceramic as a primordial material was chosen by three main factors:

  1. Represents an economical material.

  2. Resistant to weather conditions such as humidity and frost.

  3. The flexibility of the material to adapt to the complex geometry of the space.

Another advantage was that ceramic could provide the walls with colours that could evoke the memory of the industrial past. Reducing the rear facades to seven predominant colours. These seven tones and the ceramic raw colour gave us the eight dominant tones for the wall.


The challenge was then finding a process that, within the budget, would allow producing an aesthetic and functional solution along the 150 meters of dividing wall that had to be covered.

After a few failed attempts, the first of the requirements were resolved using ceramic glazed in different colours and fired at high temperatures to improve its mechanical resistance.

The final geometry was composed of a self-supporting wall consisting of only three ceramic pieces manufactured by Ceràmica Cumella: a 20 x 20 x 20 cm cube and a 20 x 13,5 cm rhombus (opaque or perforated). The cube allowed production optimization, as it worked opaque or transparent depending on the side it was placed on.

The assembly of these three pieces allowed an almost organic coronation of the wall, wrapping the different heights in a single stroke.